Post Carnival Withdraw

Since returning from the tree lot, I have been eating once a day and drinking myself stupid every night, making a sad attempt to fill up this void and kill the pain that is suddenly plaguing me. My gut is rotten to the core and just thinking about food makes me ill, but I know I should try to put something in there other than alcohol. For some reason, when I’m holding that bottle I feel as though I am becoming my best friend, but that might not be a bad thing. When I’m swimming in whiskey I can clearly see why he has such as distaste for the holidays and why he always avoided them, thinking that maybe I should too.

Drinking always has an effect on my dreams. Not last night but the previous one, I had a dream that I was still on the road. After a long afternoon of putting up sidewall in the tent, I go into the bunk house to find Jerry, asking if he can help hold the ladder or something. If there were any more details, I can’t recall them now, but just having that interaction again made me happy upon waking. Jerry was an awesome guy, and out of all the people who traveled with us, I miss him the most. He joined up in Syracuse and took on the role of Bozo, also helping with setup and tear down. For those that don’t know, Bozo is a clown in a dunk tank that gets paid to insult people. He often recycled the same handful of lame one-liners, yet still found a way to draw a crowd and keep the green rolling in.

We smoked together on a number of occasions, and he shared lurid details of his life with me for whatever reason. He was in prison for fifteen years, for having been in a fight and accidentally killing the other guy. Though it was unintentional, he had a weapon on him or something, but essentially he got charged with manslaughter and away he went. There are tears tattooed on his face to signify this and one other for the time a fight in prison yielded the same result. Jerry would joke that he had been a kung-fu master and he just acted on instinct when defending himself, which I’m not sure if I entirely believe. There were an assortment of other tattoos he had acquired while in prison, and even more that he had done himself, a few which were actually pretty good. The two pieces I remember was the face on his elbow he had done while looking in the mirror, and the demon on his chest that was supposed to be a Superman style shield. It came out the way it did because he had been tripping on acid at the time he was tattooing it, which is an important lesson on why drugs and body mods don’t mix.

Jerry also spent his teenage years and early twenties as a skinhead, though I never did find out why he decided not to pursue that lifestyle anymore. He used to have a website up and said the Feds had it shut down due to the content, then came looking for him. Again, he wouldn’t go into exact detail about what it was beyond “some heavy shit”, so trusting the validity of the story is not a hundred percent. However, a liar would be more boastful and have no problem spilling trivial facts, especially unprompted. He didn’t have a habit of talking with many of the other sideshow crew beyond pleasantries, so why I had that honor is kind of a mystery but cool at the same time.

Whiskey is also a bad influence on spontaneous decisions and there is no such thing as a ‘bad idea’ until you are suffering the consequences of it while sober. For whatever reason I decided to dye my hair SFX Blood Red last week, and in the beginning the color was brilliant, reminding me of when I had done my hair that shade in junior year of high school. However, I forgot to wash it in cool water, so the red was bleeding any time I got my hair wet or any kind of styling product was applied. This is especially unfortunate since the bathroom and all of its towels are white and the last thing I want to do is touch any of it while crimson dye is running across my skin.

Short-lived success was followed by bleach which removed the majority of the red, though there are still a few orange spots I would like to touch up prior to applying toner. According to the bottle it’s a white blonde, so hopefully I will achieve the effect I desire. The front was left red to match the wefted extensions that have already been dyed, red that transitions to black at the tips. Well, somewhere along the way I set to cutting my hair with clippers and wound up with a Chelsea, though I am pretty happy with the result. This made the second bleaching come out more even than the first, and the toner took much better than expected.

Though this may seem really trivial to talk about, altering my appearance is something I tend to do to avoid other self-destructive tendencies, which I know I’m not helping with the alcohol. Besides, my birthday is coming up in a week and I felt as though I needed a change in order to celebrate. Oh, speaking of such, I tried to get tickets for the Leftover Crack show I wanted to attend, but Vintage Vinyl had none and neither did the venue’s website. Could be possible that I waited too long, though I am going to try calling Starland directly just to double-check on the sold out status. While it is not the worst thing in the world, this does make me feel as though the birthday curse is trying to make a return, as silly as that sounds.

Well, I have errands to run which should keep my mind off the fact I haven’t heard from Jon at all since I got back. His postcards rarely leave my side, and at night when I’ve got the whiskey goggles on, I try to find some hidden message I may have missed before. Desperation is an ugly beast when your heart feels empty and you find yourself willing to do anything to keep it quiet.

Spawned from the Wilds of Weird New Jersey, my evolution is ongoing as I travel the winding road of life, taking adventures as they come. My passion lies in being a preservationist and historian of American variety arts: circus, sideshow, burlesque, vaudeville, etc. Creativity is a specialty and expressed through various artistic mediums such as writing, painting, collage, photography, body modification and fabricating custom hair art.